


Sweater Thieves are the Best Thieves

by alphaenterprise



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M, Sweaters, raleigh becket is the owner of the worst sweater collection in the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-13
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2018-01-01 08:59:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1042940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphaenterprise/pseuds/alphaenterprise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh knits Chuck a god-awful sweater.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweater Thieves are the Best Thieves

**Author's Note:**

> crossposted from my tumblr (alphajaeger!) and for liz again, who encourages me always and in all ways <3 <3
> 
> takes place in the same timeline as of universes and pillow forts, but is not a direct sequel. (i'll figure out how to link them together sometime ;u;)

 

When the temperatures take a nosedive and Chuck is forced to layer something underneath his Striker Eureka jacket, he becomes completely enamoured with Raleigh's hideous sweater collection. The materials and fabrics and knit styles are so diverse and perfectly warm that he steals them in rotations so as to appear surreptitious. Why would he notice a single one missing when he has numerous more stowed in his drawers and littering his room?

 

They are hidden beneath his t shirts at first, creating a blanket of warmth that wards off the too-cold of the weather that has been so affected by the Kaiju blue. Raleigh smiles at him whenever he catches a flash of cable knits beneath the leather of Chuck's bomber jacket, wry, affectionate gestures that usually earn Chuck fleeting, brushing kisses in passing. Their pinky fingers hook if they walk together, their knees bump when they sit side by side, and they become the Shatterdome's worst kept secret more to avoid any sort of involvement from unwanted parties than to actually attempt being secretive.

 

And one day, when Chuck turns up with a dark green sweater in plain view rather than under his shirt, Raleigh's smile turns a shade mischievous and he takes time to pointedly straighten the collar of the knitted garment. Chuck bats his hands away and scowls at him, shoulders hunching and lips pursing, and grumbles because he's not a fucking baby. The blonde just dances away, all mirth and joy bottled in one human being, and Chuck is blindsided at how equivalent to a burning star that the Becket boy is.

 

Raleigh is all puppy smiles and neverending joy that warms the bitter cold in the winter air, and Chuck finds that he doesn't mind being mildly ragged on for wearing sweaters that aren't his when he is kissed so soundly that his ears are pink for some minutes afterwards. There is a heat that resides on his skin borne of adoration and belonging to someone else that gives him a life in his bones that translates in a minute bounce in his step and an overall better demeanor.

 

The green sweater instigates something though, and there is an air of concealed amusement in Raleigh's posture and expressions for days following. He smiles, which is not unusual, but there is something there that Chuck is unable to place. It makes him roll his eyes and just to be difficult about it, he stows two of the bags of hard candies that Raleigh likes of in the corner of his room. Whines are huffed into Raleigh's folded arms when he joins Chuck to watch him tinker on Striker when there are overly-quiet days, and there is a point made to accidentally make his coffee too bitter or his tea too sweet that does nothing more than fill his heart with something unidentifiably adoring.

 

"What th' fuck 's that noise?" Chuck groans when they're halfway through a movie and he's passed out asleep with Raleigh hunkered into his side. Something is clickclacking and tinktinking and it was enough to wake him.

 

"Just the movie," comes the innocent reply, and the Australian is too sleep-buzzed to offer any sort of protest, especially when he gets a peppering of kisses across his forehead and a gentle one between his eyes, "Go back to sleep. God knows you need it."

 

"Yer one to talk." Chuck says, muffled and true, and Raleigh's mischief evaporates into adoration.

 

The clacking stops, Raleigh spoons close to Chuck, and the credits roll and replay and they sleep through the night for once.

 

..

 

Chuck notices, belated and with narrowed eyes, that Raleigh's sweater collection is getting more diverse somehow. He knows that there are numerous, thickly knitted, cream coloured sweaters that all look the same individually and are worlds apart when side by side, and that there is a burgundy one that is soft as anything ever that is tightly knitted without any discernible pattern. There are a few charcoal-grey ones that are scratchy until you wash them and then feel like aged blankets that feel like perfection, and one of them is rib-knit and the other has thick cables knitted down the sides and arms. The PPDC one is yet to achieve the same level of homeliness as the others, but it still fits into the collection because only Raleigh Becket would find a sweater with the logo embroidered in on it.

 

But the green one that he had taken is newer than the others, and so is the maroon one that is stitched with large, crisscrossing diamonds on the front. There is one that is a muted shade of gold that Chuck has never ever seen Raleigh wear, and yet it turns up and feels soft as silk like it's been worn and loved for years. There are striped ones and argyle ones that are perfect and patterned and they are turning up without notice and have no manufacturer's tags on them and it baffles Chuck as if he were attempting to work on Striker's most intricate systems wearing oven mitts and using only a hammer.

 

Upon further digging on a day when Raleigh is running observations on the breach with Mako, Chuck discovers the most hideous, jingly Christmas sweater that is blindingly red and green and white and lumped in with a black and white and orange and yellow fucking Halloween sweater and even one that is purple and green and gold for Mardi Gras of all holidays. Of fucking course, Chuck thinks in half dismay and half glee, as he shakes the Christmas sweater just to prove that it made as much of a god-awful sound in reality as it did in his head.

 

He fucking loves it and doesn't know whether to steal it just because he can't say that he expected Raleigh to not own a horrible Christmas sweater or because he wants to make a flag out of it and fly it in on Striker Eureka's shoulder. But Chuck Hansen is benevolent to those in his favour, and decides that he probably shouldn't think like that because it sounds too romantic-eighteen hundreds while putting the sweaters - now dubbed 'the really awful sweaters' in his mental catalogue of Raleigh's disgustingly extensive collection - back where they belonged and settling for grabbing Raleigh's favourite grey one and spiriting away.

 

So when Raleigh returns and demands that he close his eyes with all of the enthusiasm of a child bringing weird shit back to their parents, Chuck does so warily. He cannot tamp down the smile that sketches onto his face when Raleigh kisses him once, and holds up two middle-finger salutes and grins more raucously when he hears the Wei tangs beginning to catcall.

 

"I made you a thing." Raleigh tells him very seriously, but he is fidgeting and all but bouncing, and Chuck is suddenly crammed into something that he recognizes as a sweater without having to open his eyes.

 

"What the fuck?" Chuck's jaw drops when he looks down and finds another sweater stuffed over his head and over his torso, rendering his arms immobile while simultaneously filling him with fond exasperation. Instead of the usual elegant patterns, there is a kangaroo of all fucking things knitted onto the front of the sweater in tans and yellows, and stylized, red and green snakes run the length of the torso in S shapes atop the main blue color that is all but neon. "Raleigh fucking Becket," he begins, and his mind suddenly puts everything together when he runs the words 'I made you a thing' through his head one more time, "You fucking knitted a kangaroo on a goddamn sweater."

 

The blonde just beams and chortles, hysterical and happy to his toes, and scoops Chuck into a hug when he shoves his arms into the sleeves of the sweater. "i wanted to do a Tasmanian devil, but i settled for a kangaroo instead." Raleigh quips, innocent and guilt-free, and breaks into another peal of laughter as he unzips his jacket to show Chuck an equally terrible sweater with numerous dogs stitched in the chest and all wearing sweaters of their own.

 

"You little shit." Chuck laughs with him, playfully knocking him in the jaw because he knitted a(nother) ridiculous fucking sweater just so they could match and because it's so Raleigh, and because god fucking damn him that the sweater isn't perfectly perfect.

 

Raleigh kisses him and laughs and spills sunshine into Chuck's soul, and he figures that matching awful sweaters aren't the worst things in the world.


End file.
